


it takes a thief

by beardsley



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen gets commissioned to steal a hard drive. It goes downhill from there. In which: there are daring escapes, Cougar is thrown out of dangerous places twice, cat burglars should never be uncuffed and Jensen meets the good guys. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it takes a thief

**Author's Note:**

> This is for PistolBunny, who wanted to see criminal!Jensen. So naturally I thought the only reasonable course of action here would be for Jensen to be kind of like Catwoman, except my brain isn't quite broken enough to include the whip. So there are no whips. This was also supposed to be much slashier, but I got distracted by the plot, so it stands somewhere at 'queer gen'.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely and long-suffering B. for beta services and coffee.

It all starts with the Hard Drive of Doom.

The piece of shit totally warrants capital letters, seeing as it almost ruins Jensen's life. If this were an action-packed summer blockbuster, and sometimes Jensen's not sure his life isn't exactly that, the hard drive would be the MacGuffin.

The call comes from one of his contacts, the money is good — the money is more than good, the money is plentiful and great, and…whatever, there's just a lot of it — and the heist itself is enough of a challenge to get him hooked. He's never robbed a bank with protection like that, not without help, but his employer is pretty clear: it's gotta be a one-man job or Jensen can go hang. In retrospect, he might have fallen for the 'oh, so are you saying you _can't_ do it?' line a bit too quickly, and someone could say whoa, there, overcompensating much? But no one knows, or no one knew _then_ , so fuck it.

It takes three weeks to get the op running, and it is a work of freaking art. Two robberies in one bank: one real, one a smokescreen. The second one's diamonds, because Jensen's nothing if not classy, and if it works, hell, you can't go wrong with diamonds. Maybe he'd buy his sister a new car or something. Anyway, the diamonds are easy. The hard drive, also known as 'weird-ass sci-fi shit', is harder; but three weeks is a long time to get yourself crazy prepared. He has an encryption key, a welding torch, a small EMP bomb, C4, a buttload of duct tape and a screwdriver. The vault is designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Officially, it's impossible to get in without authorisation; unofficially, it could take a specialised team a few days of hard work; in reality, Jensen breaks inside in two hours, fifty-eight minutes.

He's kinda got a rep for pulling the impossible. It's what the guys at the Interpol love him for.

So he takes the drive, and the diamonds — why the hell not? — and triggers the alarm on his way out to make sure his genius is observed and properly appreciated by all and sundry. He's out of Milwaukee before the first five-o cruiser gets to the scene.

The call comes three days later; his employer's on the line only long enough to drop instructions — _Leave the drive in an unmarked envelope in safety deposit box number 662_ — and text him the coordinates. That in itself isn't unusual. Lots of people don't like the idea of consorting with international criminals, which is one hilarious bit of hypocrisy if Jensen's ever seen one. He drops off the drive and lays low in Cancún for a few weeks.

And that's about where things turn to shit.

~

The thing about a glamorous life of crime is that even if you go it alone, you can't _really_ go it alone. Friends in the business are your only lifeboat, and honour among thieves being what it is, it's one fine lifeboat. So the first e-mail Jensen gets — the first to set off warning bells — is from PerdiX, who may or may not be a basement-dwelling anarchist and who may or may not be from Iceland, but who definitely is the best information broker in the criminal mastermind community.

 _Raffles_ , it reads, and Jensen rolls his eyes; that is pretty low as far as nicknames go. _Three separate people called me looking for you, and I don't mean interested potential employers. Big guns, far reach, shady government types (they keep tabs on me; don't ask). I sent them on a wild goose chase in SE Asia. You really must have pissed someone off this time. Don't die._

Two days later, his heist turns up in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times and on fucking BBC News. Jensen has no idea how, but they got a blurry security picture of him — half-profile, nothing a facial recognition software could track, thank _fucking god_ — right under a headline that tells him everything he needs to know: _One-Man Sting, $20M Loot_. Which is ridiculous, the diamonds aren't worth more than fifty hundred grand, so that means it's the hard drive, and Jensen can't imagine any government idiotic enough to put a hard drive with something vital enough it needs a mass deception to get it back in a bank in fucking Milwaukee.

Jensen buzzes his hair, buys a pair of glasses so fugly they make him want to cry, and waits. The second e-mail is from his sister, and involves a lot of vaguely threatening abuse, but Jensen knows she and Rebekah are safe: there is no documentation or paper trail or witnesses that could link them, he made sure of it as soon as he went from busting Playstations for Rebekah's birthday to breaking into the Louvre (which was a work of art, too, since Interpol still doesn't know the robbery happened; the _Astronomer_ job is one of Jensen's greatest accomplishments, ever, hands down).

Somewhat to his morbid fascination, the news picture soon gets capped 'ROBIN HOOD: NOW FOR THE LULZ' and 'FFFFYEAH HE STEALS FROM THE RICH' and turns into a meme overnight. It's kind of flattering, really. Jensen saves the gifs.

Things take a turn for the shittier when his cell phone rings two days later; the caller id is blocked. Jensen rolls his shoulders and flips the phone open. 'Yeah?'

'Jake, Jake, Jake,' says a fondly exasperated voice on the other side and Jensen feels himself breaking out in cold sweat. No one who has this number knows his first name, _no one_. 'I hope you don't mind if I call you Jake?'

'Who the fuck is this?' Jensen holds the phone with one hand and grabs for all his passports with the other; he has a bad, bad feeling about this, and his bad, bad feelings usually end up being so, so right.

'I'm Max,' says…apparently Max, whatever, roll with it. 'And I wouldn't dream of interrupting your hopefully pleasant vacation, but you have to understand, I'm having a bit of a dilemma here.'

'Well, that's, you know, bummer for you,' says Jensen absently, now shoving necessities into his bag. Jesus, he needs to get out of the hotel now, he needs to get the fuck out _yesterday_. People don't call to threaten you for kicks, and in Jensen's memory calls proceed kicking down doors by, like, five minutes. Fucking fuck.

Max laughs. It's not pleasant. 'It is, isn't it? Because — you see, Jake, you seem to have skillfully acquired something that doesn't belong to you. If you catch my drift, and I hope you do.'

Pants or no pants, pants or no pants, oh, fuck it, who needs clothes, he needs the space for his lock picks. Jensen shoulders his bag and doesn't bother to lock the room behind himself, jogs to the lobby and past the smiling receptionist. 'You know how that is,' he babbles, 'things get left unprotected, anyone could pick 'em up, security is sorta like a forgotten art these days, but for the record you know I'm not admitting to anything you might be implying here, right? If you got cops on the line, say hello. Or, you know, say bye, I guess.'

Jensen jumps over a railing and straight into fucking scorching sand and _ducks_. Just then a black SUV screeches to a halt and three suits with semi-autos practically start tearing the lobby apart, climbing the stairs three steps at a time. Jensen shuts off the phone and walks down the beach, trying to look touristy and inconspicuous, for once thankful for his sunburnt shoulders and dorky glasses.

The phone rings again some ten minutes later. Jensen answers; fuck, he knows they can't triangulate the signal closer than three hundred feet, so he might as well. On the other end of the line there's nothing affable left in Max's voice, only the threat, when he says:

'You're good; of course you're good, you're one of the best. It would be a waste for the world to lose a talent like that. So I'm giving you three days, no longer, to return the drive. You'll get another call in seventy-two hours, and if you fail to give a location, well, Jake, you only need to know one thing. I _will_ find you, and I _will_ kill you. How painful it's going to be depends on how much you try to screw with me.'

Jensen throws the phone into the ocean, and starts running before it hits the water.

He is so fucked.

~

The three day mark comes and goes; no one calls Jensen on his new temporary number and no one stops him at the border.

And then he nearly gets blown up in a hotel in Santa Fe.

By nature, Jensen is not a panicky guy. Sure, he talks when he's nervous, but he also talks when he's not nervous, so that doesn't count. What counts is that Jensen is cool under pressure; duh, he's a brilliant cat burglar, he _lives_ for this stuff. People have tried, and failed, to kill him in the past. Not with a bomb, admittedly, but still. He knows danger, living on the edge, the works. But there is _something_ about 'Max'. PerdiX called him a shady government type. It just rubs Jensen the wrong way. Staring at the burning wreck of the Santa Fe hotel, he decides it's time to cut his losses. Let's see how well Max can track him if there's nothing to track.

He hotwires a Ford pickup and gets the fuck out, looking in the rear view mirror every five minutes, but by the time he hits the I-25 no one's following him. That night Jensen makes a macabre little bonfire out of all his cash, credit cards, passports and driver's licences, leaving only the one he swiped off some guy at a gas station in Trinidad. He also leaves a message on Sara's answering machine, just in case. If Max got Jensen's first name, hell, maybe he could get at his sister, too, and that's a risk Jensen's not taking.

It kinda sucks, shoplifting like he's fourteen all over again, but whatever. At least he's doing something with his hands.

In the end, though, it takes two weeks before he's going apeshit with cabin fever. He nearly gets on a plane to England twice, but can't make himself buy the ticket. He does steal three passports, fourteen pens and a laptop, just to be an asshole.

He's blaming that cabin fever and massive boredom for letting his guard down in New Orleans. He's been staying there for a few days, enjoying it probably more than he should considering the whole 'fugitive from god-even-knows-who' thing, but by that time it feels more like a roadtrip than honest fugitive-type activity, except for the paranoia. And New Orleans is cool. It's gotta be the music. And the dumb college kids on spring break; Christ, a demographic more naive and ready to part with their worldly possessions Jensen's never seen.

Anyway, the scene is this: there's a bar. Jensen's cheating his way through the third game of poker that evening. The guys at the table eye him with a mix of respect and seething hatred. Someone comes up behind them; Jensen's spidey-sense dings and his hand is halfway to the knife taped to his left forearm; the guys at the table raise their hands in a universal sign for _hey, man, I got no beef with you_. Jensen's out of his seat in one move — quick swipe of the floor gives him three men, all taller than him, one thinner, cops on steroids or army — even if it's just to go out with a bang, 'cause, realistically, three on one ain't good odds.

The bar goes quiet and still.

The big scary guy takes him on one on one, and for about a minute Jensen thinks he might have a chance. He's got some martial arts-fu and some good hundred-eighty pounds of mass to back those skills up; also, he's hella fast. They're sort of evenly matched for a while, strike for strike and parry for block, the other two guys just watching. Jensen tries to get the exit in sight, just enough to tuck and roll and get the fuck out of there, but then big scary dude makes a frustrated noise and plain fucking _decks_ him. Jensen's out like a candle.

So yeah, he's blaming the music. Or those…other…things, never mind.

~

He comes to in the back of a van. The van is on the road, which Jensen knows because he can hear the engine and street traffic. Given the size of the migraine he's got, arriving at this conclusion feels like the intellectual achievement of the decade.

Alas, Jensen thinks, New Orleans. Hardly knew ya.

There are other people in the van. Jensen can see the back of the driver's bald head; guy from the bar. With Jensen in the back is the guy who decked him and a forty-something white guy in a suit (what?). The third guy from the bar, the one with the cowboy hat, is covering the van's exit. Closing the grim posse is a tiny chick wearing an expression reminiscent of Wednesday Addams.

Jensen rolls his shoulders. 'Let me guess,' he says with a tired sigh, 'you are not the A Team.'

If these losers are supposed to be Max's henchmen or something, Jensen decides he's embarrassed for Max. The plan that springs in his head, fully-formed, is easy: keep talking and see where it takes you.

'We know who you are,' the suit says. Which is a weird thing to say; _duh_ , they've been chasing him from fucking Mexico, and Jensen's got the trail of burnt down and/or blown up property to prove it. So it's just stupid for the suit to say that. Unless. Unless they're not who Jensen thinks they are.

Huh.

'That's nice,' he says. He tries the cuffs, but no dice. Shit, if he could only get the lock pick in the seam of his jeans. 'You can expect the restraining order in the mail within…I don't know, a few weeks, I guess. How fast do these things work?'

Big and scary makes a strangled noise that could, _could_ be a laugh. It could also be indigestion. 'Can we just shoot him, Clay?'

Yeah, fuck you too. Jensen hopes indigestion _kills_ the asshole.

Meanwhile, 'No,' says the suit, outing himself as 'Clay' and the leader of Fearsome Five here, or so it seems. Man, it's all pretty cinematic, pretty cool when Jensen doesn't think too much about his impending death at the hands of evil Power Rangers. Clay turns to look at him. 'Look. We're here to do business.'

Jensen gives him the best stink eye he can manage. Times like these, he would give just about anything for laser eyes. 'Oh, right, 'cause kidnapping is such a great icebreaker. It's like we're family already.'

'Hey,' Big/Constipated says, 'we could always gag you.'

'Buy me a drink first,' Jensen shoots back.

' _Jensen_ ,' Clay snaps, and that's got Jensen's attention. He glares at Clay, who takes the chance to smirk and goes on, 'Like I said, we know who you are. We could turn you over to the FBI, but if you hear us out, we might not have to.'

And okay, this might not be the best reaction in the history of, well, reactions or whatever, but Jensen can't top himself. He bursts out laughing. Clay and the gang keep staring at him like he's slow, and finally Jensen says, shaking his head, 'Jesus, I'm sorry, do you seriously think that's incentive to a good working relationship?' He stretches his fingers. 'Why don't you fucking _uncuff me_ , then we can talk.'

It isn't supposed to work. Jensen just talks on the off chance that he might actually talk these jokers to death, but here they are: Clay nods to the chick. 'Aisha.'

She crouches in front of Jensen and jerks his hands closer by way of yanking on the chain, and uncuffs him. She's looking mildly disgusted as she does it. Jensen doesn't know if he should count that as a win. With the close quarters, for a moment Aisha's jacket pockets are right in Jensen's face, and he can't help it, he can't, it's a _sickness_ , he picks her right pocket where Clay and the two guys can't see.

And it works. Aisha doesn't even twitch and no one bats an eye, and Jensen has a cell phone that he practically falls over himself to hide, and keeps talking all the while.

' _Thank_ you. Right. Now that we're sort of approaching the same page, you holding me against my will and driving god knows where, all that, what do you want from me?' He holds up his left hand. 'Wait, no, first I gotta know who you are, I have standards, I don't just work under threat for anybody.'

After a moment of very serious-looking deliberations between the various people in the van, acted out with their eyebrows, Clay settles on, 'We're the good guys.'

Jensen gives him his best _bitch, please_ face.

'Sort of,' Clay amends. 'Look, you don't need to know who we are, but what you need to know is that someone's after you.'

Jensen rolls his eyes. Right, because, a) it's not like the last time Jensen stole something for an anonymous employer he ended up in a world of shit, and b) way to make the obvious sounds even more obvious, _Captain Obvious_. It would be so easy to somehow miss people promising to kill him painfully, raiding his hotel and trying to _blow him up_.

'Oh, yeah,' he says, trying to maybe stall or fish or something, 'Feebs, Interpol, Federales, you name it. Also the Mossad, after I said I'd rather be ejected into space without pants than work for them.'

But Clay doesn't buy it. He just says, 'Max,' and that's it. Jensen can feel blood draining from his face. Except not really, that's just a stupid metaphor, he has blood, but it sure _feels_ like he doesn't, which…kinda doesn't make sense. Thanks for that, brain, you traitor.

'What about Max?' Jensen's trying for nonchalant and bored. It comes out flat and painfully transparent. On the bright side, whatever Clay sees in Jensen's face makes him relax a tiny fraction. Maybe he feeds on the fear and misery of others. Maybe Clay is secretly Cthulhu. That is so not a bright side, Jensen thinks.

'You stole something from him,' Clay says. He doesn't sound like an Elder God, though, more like a tired guy with a lifelong smoking habit. 'It's more valuable to him than any of us thought. He has people looking for you, all over the world.' Ha pauses for dramatic effect, then: 'And we can protect you.'

Jensen snorts. 'Yeah, right. Do I look like an idiot?' He glares at everyone in the van. 'Don't answer that. Shit, all I know, _you're_ his goons trying to fish out where the drive is before you kill me.'

With a sigh, Aisha reaches to the floor and picks up a tattered leather bag. She takes out something small and rectangular and very, very familiar. 'The drive is right here,' she says, unnecessarily.

Jensen stares, lost for words. 'I — what? I just — what did just — what? You hired me,' he says, something like comprehension crawling up his spine in a chill. ' _You_ hired me.'

'Aisha did,' Clay says, frowning in her direction, like that's supposed to mean anything to Jensen. 'It…wasn't a collective decision.'

'You're one of the best thieves in the business,' says Aisha. Jensen is so not falling for any compliments today. 'We could have tried to get the drive ourselves. We would have failed. You did it in three hours.'

'Technically it was two hours fifty-eight minutes,' Jensen corrects distractedly in the interest of whatever, then scowls. 'Fuck semantics. Jesus on a coke binge, you people got me on Max's radar. What the everloving _fuck_.'

'It wasn't meant to work like that,' Big/Constipated says.

'Thanks, that helps a lot,' Jensen tells him. 'Fuck, I almost got blown up. I…' He blinks, the guilty expressions all around triggering another brain wave, and Jensen slumps down in his seat. 'I'm your collateral, right?'

'I'm sorry,' Clay says after a moment of awkward silence. Something in his voice tells Jensen it's not the first time he's been in this kind of situation, which isn't exactly doing wonders for Jensen's morale. 'I am. It's our fuckup.' Jensen snorts, 'cause yeah, you can say that again, and Clay intones seriously, 'But we can keep you safe. It's our duty.'

Aaand they're in the Twilight Zone. 'What?'

'I said —'

'I heard what you said,' Jensen snaps. 'I never heard anything stupider in my life.'

Baldie in the driving seat interrupts before Clay can get a word it, 'Jesus, you guys are like _toddlers_. Look, kid —' that's probably meant to be Jensen '— Max wants you dead, and if he wants you dead I give it a month, tops, before you're out. We can help you stay alive, you just gotta do one thing for us in return. That's what our fearless leader's been trying to ineptly communicate all this time. You're _welcome_.'

So they're not in the Twilight Zone after all. They're in the cold world of capitalism. It's one of Jensen's least favourite places. On the other hand, he can feel the van slowing slightly, which means they're probably in heavier traffic. Jensen glances to Cowboy Hat, and then he sees it: the door handle. It's locked, but not secured. _Yes_. Stall, stall, stall. 'And that thing, that you want me to do, would be…?'

Clay levels him with a flat stare. 'Steal something else from Max.'

There is a long silence, punctuated by the turn signal a few times as the van changes lanes. They can't be going more than forty. Jensen can feel his pulse quicken.

'So,' he says, trying not to sound _too_ incredulous, wouldn't want to hurt these freaks' feelings, 'for those of us just tuning in, allow me to recap. You hire me —' Clay scowls '— okay, _she_ hires me, and you get Max's hellhounds on my trail or whatever, guy's a psycho and it's your fault he's after me, and now you want me to do something so he's…even more…after me? I — got carried away a bit,' Jensen admits, 'but the point remains, you? Clay? You are one sick puppy. And look, gentlemen, lady, I'm sorry. I wish I could help, I do, I'm a giving soul by nature, but this is completely fucking batshit, and I'm not sure I'm any safer being with you. In conclusion: batshit.' This is it. Now or never. 'So if you don't mind,' Jensen says, steeling himself for certain death, 'I'll just be going now.'

'I don't think,' Clay starts, but he's too late. Maybe he'll learn something from this adventure: if you catch a cat burglar, _don't uncuff him_.

Jensen jumps, kicks the legs out from under Big/Constipated, and slams bodily into Cowboy Hat. 'Hi there,' he gasps giddily, hand grabbing for the lever, and before anyone can do anything Jensen's throwing himself and Cowboy Hat out of the van.

They fall on the hood of a bright green Toyota, which is just humiliating. Jensen bruises his entire right side and Cowboy Hat makes a strangled noise, and _ouch_ , but at least the windshield doesn't crack. Someone's yelling from the van, but traffic is traffic, they can't just _stop_. The woman inside the Toyota screams mutely, eyes wide, and slams on the brakes.

Cowboy Hat is reaching around Jensen for — something, knife or gun or taser — and Jensen rolls them off the car and onto the street. His back takes most of the impact, _double ouch_ , but he doesn't brain himself on the curb, so there's that. He slams the edge of his palm against the side of Cowboy Hat's neck (waste to hit a face like that) and the guy goes limp. Jensen can hear the van trying to take a wild U-turn and get blocked by other cars. He drags Cowboy Hat to the pavement and props him up against a lamp post. The guy…doesn't look dead. Good enough. Jensen takes his gun, and takes off.

He can hear a train, somewhere, somewhere, _left_. Jesus, he hasn't run like that since Cancún. Behind him, there's shouting and gunfire, but Jensen's already scaling a fire escape, quick as a fucking cat. They may be military or mercenaries, they may own Jensen in hand-to-hand and shit, but _no one_ is faster than him when he's running for his life. He jumps onto the roof, tucks, rolls, and runs. And up to the next one, and the next. Left, left…there. Train tracks, hello, and thank you god or Spaghetti Monster or whatever: the train Jensen heard before might be gone, but there's another one.

And okay, he hasn't done this in a while, but it should be like riding a bike, right? For a second Jensen considers maybe a safer course of action, but when he turns he can see Clay and Aisha and Scary/Big, closing in on him from the other rooftop.

So Jensen bows, gives them a little wave, and jumps down four floors, on top of the running train.

By the time his tail makes it to the edge of the roof, he's gone, baby.

~

He jumps trains twice, and after the most uncomfortable and freezing night he can remember he ends up in Baltimore.

Aisha's phone gives him nothing, it's like she's only been using it in absolute emergencies. Jensen memorises Clay's number just in case, but other than that there's sweet fuck all. The inbox is empty, Internet history wiped; it appears Aisha is suffering from a bad case of the paranoia. Fuck it. Jensen strips down the phone and tosses the parts all across the city.

He doesn't stay in one place for more than two days; he only uses phones he picks from people he passes in the street, and throws them away after one call; he goes through four stolen laptops in a week. Being on the run _sucks_.

It's in Boston, where he spends the night in an office building under renovations, that he finally caves and calls Sara. He just needs to know she's fine, that's all. He's in a really kinda bad place and with his future outlook looking as grim as it does, he thinks maybe hearing his sister's voice will give him the kick he needs to keep running away with his tail between his legs, whatever.

Sara doesn't pick up, though. The 'Hello?' on the other end is high and small and Jensen slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, clutching the phone to his ear. 'Uncle Jake?'

'Hi, hi,' he says. He drops his head to his knees. 'How are you guys? Where are you?'

Rebekah laughs, delighted. 'In the Yukon! It's great. We stayed with this guy, and now we have a house, and it's super secret. It was kinda boring, but we have three malamutes now, they're called Larry, Curly and Moe.'

'That's totally cool,' Jensen says; it really is. 'Did you get the, uh, the birthday presents?'

'They were awesome,' Rebekah tells him with near reverence.

'Good, that's — good.'

'Where'd you get the Greedo, though? Google says it's a rare collector's item.'

'Oh, you know.' Jansen waves a hand, then remembers Rebekah can't see him. 'Never trust what you read on the Internet, all lies, it was just lying around, wasn't that hard to get. Did you like it? I thought you'd like it.'

'It's great, uncle Jake. Hey, mom's here, you wanna talk to mom?'

He really, really does. Except he might also start crying. 'Nah, that's fine, kiddo. Look, I gotta go, talk to you later?'

'Sure,' Rebekah says easily. 'When are you gonna visit?'

'That's kinda,' says Jensen, sounding funny even to himself, 'I don't really. I dunno. Soon, I promise, just gotta do some, you know, stuff. Take care of your mom, all right?'

'I will.' You have to really know the kid to hear the disappointment, but it's there. Jensen feels like a total dick. 'Bye, uncle Jake.'

'Bye, Becks. I love you guys,' Jensen says to the dial tone.

He wipes the phone clean of his fingerprints, takes out the SIM card, and throws the rest out the window. It soars for a moment, then falls like a brick and misses the windshield of a red VW by about an inch.

By morning, Jensen's in Portland, taking the I-95. He steals a Canadian licence plate and forges new papers in a motel, not his best work but you'd need a microscope to tell. He crosses the border at Houlton-Woodstock as Rémy Marceaux, a post grad at Université Concordia. As long as no one checks his Québécois French, Jensen's safe.

Except then the newspapers proclaim that there's going to be a René Magritte exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, including works that have only been previously shown in the Guggenheim, and shit, Jensen always wanted to steal a Magritte.

Of course, in a shocking swerve that surprises exactly no one, it all goes to shit.

~

So three days later, Jensen wakes up barefoot and stripped to his boxers, with his hands cuffed behind his back to a low-hanging pipe. They didn't even leave his watch, which, good for them, there were a few surprises there. Jensen vindictively hopes the spring-coil mechanism he installed to hide the lock pick took out someone's freaking eye. The bruises on his ribs tell him exactly how gently he got manhandled, but he doesn't have a concussion, which is nice. He always throws up when he's concussed, it's kinda embarrassing.

The last thing he remembers is hanging from the ceiling over _The Dominion of Light I_ , Mission Impossible-style.

Now he's in some kind of warehouse, empty and pretty run down, paint peeling from the walls. Probably used for many an illegal drop, if he's any judge. He can spy at least six guards, even if only by the barrels of their rifles from behind stone pillars. That's…not so good.

'Hey,' he says. It comes out a hoarse groan, so Jensen coughs and tries again: 'Hey! Anyone got a cigarette or something, I could really use a smoke right now? Yes? No?' Nobody moves. 'Yeah, thought so. Fuck you very much.'

He can't see any cameras, but that doesn't mean much. Okay. So they got him, and now they're all of them sitting around, waiting for either some upper-level mook to finish Jensen off or for Max. Jensen's ego wants it to be Max, even though his rational mind screams at him for being an idiot, but in the end it doesn't matter. He was sloppy, they got him, the end.

The warehouse floor is swept clean, not even a splinter that Jensen can see, but whatever. First things first. Jensen rolls his shoulders.

'There was a thick-set man with frog eyes,' he starts, loudly enough to mask small noises, not loud enough to be obvious, 'who was standing at the door…'

He slips his hands to the front easily; the pipe should have been higher to keep down a normal guy. Jensen's not a normal guy. He's got his back to the guards for less than a minute, and keeps humming as he dislocates his left thumb, which hurts like _hell_ , jeez, he hasn't done that since that time cops got him in Kyoto. He gets out of one cuff, and just like that he's free. What kind of idiot just hooks the cuffs around a pipe? Fucking amateurs. Jensen turns back around, carefully holding the cuffs to keep them from jingling, but the mooks haven't even moved. Booyah. He can't keep up the song and put his joint back in place, so he shuts up and clenches his jaw and just _does_ it, the joint realigning with a hollow crunch. Jensen doesn't make a noise. For a moment, he just breathes in and out through his nose.

'Whaddaya know,' he says after a moment, 'can't remember the words. Anyone know what goes after Betty shoots him in the legs?'

He's met with silence, but that's okay, so he starts over with _You Shook Me All Night Long_. He needs a plan, and fast. Getting out of handcuffs is one thing; taking down six armed guards while buck naked is something else entirely.

Half an hour later he's got nothing, but that turns out to not matter a lot, because then there's the soft crack of breaking glass and one of the guards drops to the ground.

That's all Jensen needs. Five guards take cover and get directly in his line of sight, but they ignore him, too focused on not getting their brains shot out. Another two break formation and run for Jensen, but they don't even reach for their guns. Who would, against a naked guy with his hands cuffed? Well, fuck them. Jensen takes the first one out with a roundhouse kick to the inner thigh, going straight for the femoral artery; the asshole howls in pain and goes down. The second is starting to reach for his rifle, and Jensen laughs in his face. Yeah, real smart there, a long-barrel rifle in close quarters. Jensen yanks it out of his hands, kicks the schmuck in the throat and backsprings, one-handed, behind one of the pillars.

There's three more shots, and then all goes quiet, except for the footsteps making their way towards Jensen. Who knows he doesn't exactly paint a frightening picture, barefoot and in — oh, wow, okay, _blood-stained boxers_ , how did that happen? Still, he comes out from behind cover and aims the rifle on —

'Nice moves,' Cowboy Hat says. Very slowly, he raises his empty hands. He's got an M40 slung over his shoulder.

Jensen kind of stares, for a moment, then remembers he has a loaded weapon trained on the guy, so he drops it. 'Holy shit,' he says. 'What.'

Cowboy Hat gives him a once-over, then asks somewhat dubiously, 'You okay?'

'What?' Oh, right. Naked, bled on, barefoot, sorta beat up. 'I'm fine,' Jensen says, and waves his hand in Cowboy Hat's face, then winces when pain shoots up his wrist. 'Ow, sore hand, had to dislocate the thumb, and also: holy shit.' He looks around the warehouse, towards the bodies. Back to Cowboy Hat. And back to the bodies. 'Seriously, man, if your name is like Hattori Hanzo or something, I could so buy that.'

'Cougar,' says Cowboy Hat. He's looking at Jensen like he doesn't know what to make of him, but that's okay, Jensen gets that a lot. 'My name's Cougar.'

'Of course it is,' says Jensen, snorting, 'what was I thinking.' He walks over to the closest henchman. It's the one who Jensen kicked in the thigh, and he's making pitiful noises. Jensen sort of hopes he didn't break anything too important, then leans on the guy's throat with his forearm until he goes limp. 'So, okay,' Jensen says as he takes his pants and jacket and throws them on, also boots, boots are important. 'Please don't think I'm looking a gift horse in the whatever 'cause I am not, I'm really happy to see you, ecstatic, but what the hell are you doing here?'

Cougar looks around the warehouse. 'Saving your white ass,' he says. Apparently there's nothing quite like good looks mixed with assholery. He throws Jensen a bundle of keys, and Jensen fumbles for a moment to find the smallest one. He gets his right hand free and throws the cuffs over the shoulder.

'Your boss know you're here?'

Cougar just shrugs. Kinda shifty there, which probably means the answer is _maybe_.

'Ooh, I get it,' Jensen says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his stolen pants, only to find a pack of cigarettes. He lights one. 'The silent treatment. Is it the part where I threw you out of a car? 'Cause I'm totally sorry about that, man, drowning in guilt.'

Cougar asks, finally, 'You done?' Jensen rolls his shoulders and shrugs. Cougar tips his hat lower over his eyes. 'Vámonos.'

It turns out there's a getaway car. Jensen decides it would be a dick move to split, so he gets in and rolls down the window, lighting a second cigarette off his first. God, he _asked_ the guards, what kind of heartless bastard you gotta be to refuse a man a smoke that could be his last? As they drive out of the docks and off towards the setting sun, Jensen notices two things: one, Cougar doesn't seem to mind the quiet or the smoking, so kudos, and two, they're not in Canada any more. Unless the big sign promising _Miami Beach NEXT RIGHT_ is a hallucination of Jensen's tired, tired mind.

After going through the entire pack, Jensen feels like a human being again. 'You know,' he says idly, 'my mother always told me not to go anywhere with strangers, especially if they had a sniper rifle and a cowboy hat, but then, she also told me to respect the law, and look how that turned out, so maybe sometimes mothers don't know shit.' Cougar doesn't offer anything by way of anything, and it suddenly occurs to Jensen that just because he's not dead yet doesn't mean his white ass is in fact saved. 'So hey, where we going? You guys have some supervillain liar or something?' At that, Cougar snorts. 'That'd be cool,' Jensen says. 'No judging here.'

They end up in a motel. It looks empty: it's already dark, but the neon isn't on and there's light in only one window. Jensen follows Cougar in, chatting mostly to himself. There's a gun tucked at the back of Cougar's jeans, so if push comes to shove Jensen could always grab it and hotwire the car.

'…but the only thing they could hold me on was assault with a Nerf gun,' he's saying, 'which, I mean, is there even precedent for that? So I talked one of the cops into letting me ride his horse, that was awesome, but then the Interpol got there. I thought about running on horseback, how fucking epic would that be, but that Aston Martin, man, it was just _right there_ , it was calling to me. Anyway, so that's how I got away in Switzerland.'

The room they enter has people in it, it turns out, all the people Jensen pissed off in that van. Okay, awkward. In a second Aisha has two guns on him and Big/Constipated looks up from sharpening what looks like a machete. Jensen raises his hands, eyes wide, going for the innocent puppy look.

'Cougar,' says Clay, sounding pained, 'when you said you wanted to get your gun back I thought you'd _get your gun back_ , not bring Catwoman here along for the ride.'

'Hey,' Jensen protests, though secretly he may or may not be flattered.

'He's all right,' Cougar says, crossing his arms across his chest and giving Clay a meaningful look from under the hat. 'Changed his mind.'

'He did?' asks Clay at the same time as Jensen asks, 'I did?'

Cougar throws _him_ a meaningful look from under the hat. Man, Jensen seriously digs the hat. It's got character. He shakes his head, then cracks his neck. 'Right, yeah, sure I did. Guess at least you guys don't hold me at gunpoint. So…gonna tell me who you are now?'

Clay looks at him for a long time, and nobody moves, but then he just shrugs. 'Might as well. If you betray us,' he adds casually, 'I'll kill you myself.'

Jensen believes him.

~

'Lawman has put an end to my running,' Jensen hums, sliding down the side of the Trifecta Intl skyscraper, 'and I'm so far from my home…'

He stops at the thirteenth floor and cuts an entrance in the window, then slinks inside feet-first. The office is dark, illuminated only by the street lights below. The door is open. Jensen pushes up his goggles and takes out the GPS. Okay, follow down the hallway, first turn left.

His comm link crackles with static. 'Jensen,' Clay says, 'what's your status?'

Right. Jensen's still kinda getting used to having to report to somebody in real time. 'I'm in,' he replies. 'Look, you wanna help or you wanna keep distracting the man at work? Let me to my thing, I'm a professional.'

'Coulda fooled me,' Roque mutters somewhere in the background.

'I heard that,' Jensen says.

'You were supposed to.'

Jensen turns left. Here it is. Decent vault, ID swipe and reinforced doors with a combination lock. Nice. He takes out the drill and borescope. It's precision work; not much hanging in the balance, but you just gotta have a thief's hands. Magic fingers. Moving carefully, Jensen watches the tumblers fall into place, and with a final _click_ the door unlocks. He checks his watch; it took eight minutes.

'Ooh,' Jensen says when the vault opens. 'Shiny.'

There's a lot of gold inside, literal bars of gold stacked against all three walls. And there in the middle, a glass case on top of a marble plinth. Jensen kneels next to it; inside, there's a pretty ordinary-looking tablet. Nothing like the Hard Drive of Doom. Whatever. Jensen takes out the drill again. The glass is laminated, so even though drilling a hole shatters its entirety, the pieces stay in place. He slowly takes out a few with pliers, just enough so he can reach inside with his hands. Bit of duct tape between his teeth, Jensen slips the edge of a small pocket knife underneath the tablet with his left hand, then takes out the tablet itself with his right. He duct-tapes the knife to stay in place. Pressure sensor: pwnd.

He checks his watch. Eleven minutes until the security alarms go back online.

Except _that_ 's when they come back online, and the entire building explodes with one giant deafening howl like a foghorn, but worse. For a second, Jensen just freezes like a deer caught in the whatever.

'What,' he says. 'What! No! No, nonono, that's not supposed to be _happening_.' He shakes himself all over and gets the fuck out of the vault before it can close on automatic or something, then bolts in the direction of the nearest fire exit. 'Clay,' he barks into his comm, ' _Clay_! I need help here!'

'On the way,' comes Clay's tinny voice, and Jensen just growls in disgust. He needs help _now_ , but of course he's alone, what was he _thinking_ signing up for a team.

Guards are already one floor below him when Jensen heaves himself bodily through the heavy door, and they're armed, isn't that just typical. One actually fires. Jensen hightails it back the way he came.

He's on the other end of the building when they get to him, the Seattle cityscape sprawling in front of him across the high windows.

'Freeze, asshole!'

Jensen does. With his back to the guards, he raises his hands over his head. He sighs. Not a bad place to die, all things considered, and if the guards don't know who he is maybe they'll just shoot him quickly and that'll be it.

And then his comm link crackles to life; it's Cougar, and there's only one word: ' _Drop_.'

So Jensen does, again, ducks to the ground, covering his head and rolling to the side. The window bursts inwards, followed by a pretty pissed off Cougar in climbing gear, guns akimbo. It's pretty magnificent, if you don't think too hard about how his hat manages to stay on. Still, the guards don't stand a chance, they're dead meat in ten seconds flat. Downstairs somewhere there's shouting and stuff. Jensen gets to his feet and checks if he doesn't have any dangerous artery-slicing bits of glass on him.

'Come here often,' he starts, but Cougar throws a harness and rope at him. 'Ouch, jeez, can I at least finish my obligatory one-liner?'

'Talk to yourself much?' Cougar says. He takes position behind the corner. Discarding the guns, he opts for a rifle. Jensen has a feeling he always opts for a rifle. This one has a cool infrared scope.

'Never underestimate a man's knack for witty banter,' Jensen tells him. He straps himself in and anchors the rope to the nearest doorway, which is dangerous as fuck and also not subtle at all, but he has a cunning plan to hang on to Cougar in case the possibility of plummeting to his death arises.

Footsteps, two clean shots, and then Cougar's back, rifle thrown over his back, walking them over to the window ledge and attaching Jensen's harness to his with two carabiners.

'Come with me if you want to live,' he says quietly, giving Jensen what appears to be his most asshole-y grin. Jensen falls a little bit in love right then.

But he's kind of a dick too, so he just says, 'You probably thought this would be your turn,' grabs hold of Cougar's harness, and throws them out the window.

~

Pooch has a pretty sweet Hummer parked two blocks away, and they get out of dodge with a screech of the tires. Clay seems pleasantly surprised that Jensen managed to get the tablet, which is both insulting and gratifying, in a way. It also turns out that the alarm snafu was neither Jensen's or the Losers' fault; there's been a minute-long power outage, and when electricity came back on, the infrared laser beams reset themselves automatically while Jensen was standing right in the middle.

It's weird; no one questions Jensen's presence along for the ride. Part of him expected they'd ditch him as soon as he handed over the tablet, but maybe Clay was serious about that whole duty thing. Maybe they really are the sort of good guys. Huh. The more you know.

'Here's the plan,' Clay says from the passenger seat, 'it's a simple plan: we go off the grid. We disappear. More than before. We get out of the country and that's it, that's all she wrote. We've been doing this a while,' he tells Jensen. 'It's gonna work. And I keep my word, so you just stick with us, kid.'

'Just try not to piss me off,' Roque adds, but Jensen can tell he doesn't really mean it. Jesus, it's easy to make friends with these guys, you steal a few super-secret pieces of hardware and they take you in like a stray cat.

'So where are we going?' he asks, when it doesn't look like anyone else is gonna.

'Te Anau,' Clay says. 'New Zealand.'

'New Zealand,' Jensen repeats blankly, in dawning horror. 'But that's…but there's…do they have high profile museums? Banks? Jesus on a dinosaur, you're gonna reduce me to cheating in casinos and pyramid schemes — are pyramid schemes illegal in New Zealand?'

'Yes,' says Aisha.

Jensen puts his head in his hands. 'Thank god.' He looks up and employs the foolproof puppy eyes. Fuck, he almost forgot those are _good guys_. 'Look, I can't do the whole lawful citizen thing. I'll go full-out _Shining_ on you, you gotta at least let me pickpocket people.'

Clay sighs. 'I don't care what the hell you do, as long as you don't get the team in trouble.'

'Please,' says Jensen, bristling, 'I could swipe all your wallets and you wouldn't even notice, I won't get you in _trouble_.'

'Wait,' says Pooch. 'Are you seriously kleptomaniac or something? With the minor theft?'

Jensen shrugs. 'Well, you know, I guess, I dunno.' Which reminds him…Jensen goes through his pockets. Shit. He digs out the stuff he stole on automatic, in the heat of running away and stuff. 'So, uh, whose wallet is this? Exactly?'

Cougar glares and grabs it back, and doesn't say anything to anyone until the airport.

~

'What _is_ with that guy?' Jensen wonders quietly as they're waiting for their plane. Cougar is pretending to sleep, but either everyone's used to his doing exactly that or they're fooled, the fools, because no one pays any attention. Which is just weird. Aside from the casual danger banter and the hat and the, you know, hotness, Jensen really can't figure the guy out. Maybe he's really a cougar. A were-cougar. Jensen has _got_ to keep an eye on him on full moon.

Pooch follows his line of sight. 'Who, Cougs?' He makes a gesture that, if it's supposed to mean anything, is completely lost on Jensen. 'Dunno. You threw him off dangerous places twice, man. Don't think he's ever been caught off guard in his life. It's personal. So I'm guessing either he's gonna kill you in your sleep or it's true love.'

'Huh,' says Jensen. He squints at the hat for a moment, then rolls his shoulders and turns to Pooch. 'I swiped a couple Nintendo DS off some kids at the security station, you wanna play Call of Duty?'

'You stole game consoles,' Pooch says, incredulous, 'at the _security station_?'

Jensen blinks. 'Yeah.'

After a moment, Pooch just shakes his head. 'Sure, gimme one.'

~

New Zealand turns out to be pretty cool. The house Aisha somehow swindles for them (friend of a friend of a friend, she says; Jensen's beginning to understand that the woman has a lot of friends in a lot of places) is overlooking the harbour, the weather's nice and the beer is cold. Jensen claims the attic as his room. Getting out through the skylight is gonna have to be enough for a while, as far as daring escapes go.

Okay, so it's actually pretty crappy when you're an adrenaline junkie going cold turkey in a small town in New Zealand. Jensen thinks fondly of all the Hiltons he conned his way into, the Ritz-Carlton in Hong Kong he paid for, the storage locker in Paris that has some of the shit he stole just for kicks with no hope of ever selling, and decides at least he's not in the ass-end of nowhere in the Yukon, accompanied only by three dogs and your overactive ten-year-old daughter. He's gonna call Sara soon. Ish. Damn, how do you tell your sister you've been sort of adopted by a rogue spec-ops team?

Jensen deposits the contents of his pockets — cigarettes, pens, matches, credit cards, two cell phones, okay, maybe he really does have a problem — and his bag on his bunk, grabs a beer and goes to soak up the…moon…on the porch. It's a nice porch. He tries not to wonder, if all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, what will _no_ work and no play do? Maybe he should pick up extreme sports. Didn't New Zealand invent bungee jumping? Or martial arts. How about: Muay Thai and le parkour. That should be fun.

'Jet lag?'

Jensen jumps, then throws Cougar an annoyed look. The man is a freaking _ninja_. He sits down next to Jensen, crossing his legs where Jensen's swing over the edge. Jensen really hopes no killer wildlife shows up to munch on his feet or anything.

'This isn't how I imagined I'd end up,' he says, leaning back on his hands to look over the lake and mountains and all the shit that, yes, very pretty, all right. 'Tagging after a bunch of renegade soldiers on a mission to kill, like, the CIA's own Hannibal Lecter. I get it, man, you're the good guy anti-heroes, it's all totally dramatic and stuff. But me? I'm not like you.'

'Aisha ain't either,' says Cougar. 'Doesn't matter.'

'I steal shit,' Jensen says, in case Cougar missed that part. 'I lie. Compulsively. I'm chaotic neutral. I don't do the Rambo shit, I do, like, fine arts theft and burglary on a global scale. So you see, this all is a terrible idea that's gonna end in tears. I like your hat, by the way, very fetching.'

They sit in silence for a while. Jensen now understands that just because Cougar doesn't vocalise doesn't mean he's not listening, so it's okay. Finally Cougar moves to stand and says, 'Wanna go cheat at cards? Drinks on me.'

Jensen grins. 'Oh, _hell_ yes.'

Upstairs, he can hear something like a violent showdown between either Clay and Aisha, Clay and Roque, Roque and Aisha or all three, and studiously doesn't think about it too much. Somewhere on the second landing, Pooch is probably talking to his wife.

'Hey,' Jensen says, following Cougar through the empty ground floor, 'you're not taking me to, like, be your wingman, we're actually gonna drink and win money off douchebag college kids, right?' Cougar rolls his eyes. 'Good. 'Cause I am so stealing your gun again if you ditch me.'

'Try,' says Cougar. It sounds like a challenge, and Jensen thinks he might just take it.


End file.
